It started innocently enough. When I was looking at online dating profiles, a girl casually mentioned her personality was similar to that of Pinkie Pie. Somehow, without looking it up, I KNEW who Pinkie Pie was. Maybe because I was familiar with the earlier generations of My Little Pony because of the gaggles of small female cousins I've had over the years? I don’t exactly know how, but the point is, I did. I decided to do more research, so I looked up who she was. I thought “wow, that’s… interesting.” It led me to watching episode 10 of Season 1, the parasprite episode, showing how ridiculous Pinkie Pie could be. I then tabled the idea of MLP… For a while.

Then a friend was talking to me and said something like “You know, there are many 20-something guys who like that show, I’m not into it, but I see why they like it.” I remember being strangely happy that a community like that existed, even though I wasn't part of it.

Next, at some point during the fall my family was making apple cider again. Turns out that our family owns an ancient, antique (note: not worth anything) cider press from 1850 Springfield, Ohio. The same cider press that appears as an antique in the Museum of History and Industry in downtown Seattle. I think I decided to look up something about apple cider. Either Google knew me too well, or some other confluence of events happened to lead me to watching “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000” episode… Which I really liked. After that, I gave up on fighting it and started Season 1, Episode 1 to see what this whole brony thing I kept hearing about was all about, and the rest is, well, history.

It took about 3 months on/off, but I did watch all the episodes. One time I told a friend “I was upset today so I made a milkshake, got out my favorite blanket, and watched My Little Pony all night” The response I got back was “…wow.” Wow, indeed.

I grew to really like Fluttershy, because I saw so much of myself in her. She has a pet bunny, I have a stuffed bunny from my childhood. She’s impossibly shy and doesn't always know how to assert herself and occasionally goes on efforts to fix that – much like myself! Her element is kindness, and that is something I've always strived to have in my life. Next to Fluttershy, I’m officially in love with Twilight Sparkle, because she’s a nerd, because she tries hard to think about the consequences of her actions, and works really hard to fix things when they go wrong with unwavering perseverance. I do that, too, but the thing that cinched the deal, was the final episode of Season 3.

I had a party at my apartment to celebrate the last episode of Season 3, which I deliberately avoided watching until I could watch it with some friends. If I wasn't a brony before watching that show, I am now.

For the next week, at home, and at work, that episode was on constant repeat, as background noise, or as simply something to stare at as I tuned out the rest of the world. I kept watching it because I couldn't understand why I wanted to keep watching it. Certain things about it are logically frustrating. It leaves so many unanswered questions, and as everyone admits, it felt super-rushed. Yet something genius lingers in the episode’s construction. Ultimately, my attempts to make sense of it failed because it isn’t logical. It is emotional, a clear example between a masterpiece of the emotion and a masterpiece of logic. This episode would not have been possible before season 3, because it relies on the emotional history that the characters have built up, and it ties it all up with song, which as one reviewer said “makes me extremely happy.”

What is it that has got this show taking off like a rocket? When I have friends look at me strangely for watching it, I tell them “Watch Episodes 1 and 2 of Season 1, then tell me you don’t like it.” Thus far, nobody has come back from that experience without being converted, and I believe the following is why.

The generation of people < ~30 years old (including myself) has struggled to find a morality they call their own. Conventional religion clearly isn’t cutting it. While I have friends who have joined churches, I have many more who have left after the wounds and scars of organized religion became intolerable. Religion is still strong in many ways and indeed has many advantages, as this TED talk elucidates (http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_atheism_2_0.html), but for many it has ceased to perform its self-proclaimed purpose, leaving a hole that many struggle to even admit is there.

This hole, I believe is where My Little Pony’s morality, with its laser-focus on one thing and one thing only: the importance (the ‘magic’) of friendship, enters the picture. The most important one I will call out is this one: “I’ll tell you what we've learned Discord, We've learned that friendship isn't always easy. But there’s no doubt it’s worth fighting for!” (http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Friendship_lessons#Season_two). How many of us have had friends that we've abandoned? Friends that we've “grown out of” or had some fight with that seems to be an incontrovertible wedge? How many times have we thought about going back and fighting for them, again? How many times have we been in situations where, without our friends, we would be in serious trouble, if not dead? How many times have our friends been “the shoulders of giants” that we could stand on, enabling not one of us, but all of us, to do something incredible? For me, the answers to these questions clearly show how powerful this simple concept is, so why is it that we needed a cartoon for little girls to demonstrate it?

In fact, this idea is not new. I believe the answer to the above question is the packaging. The message from the show is undiluted by anything else that may cloud it such as scandal, conspiracy, bureaucracy, cliquishness, jealousy, closed-mindedness, or any of the other problems that come with other vehicles that our society has created to exemplify this message (corporations, religion, education, etc). MLP is pure. It is an idyllic vision, much like Avatar, and we come away from it asking ourselves “why can’t our world, our reality, be like this, too?”

Next, a point based on personal experience. The generation that has been gripped by MLP (< ~30 crowd), also has mighty struggles with romance (then again, perhaps this is nothing new if all of literature is to be taken into account). There are numerous differences between how today’s generation and how previous generation handled relationships. Consider a culture of earning the MRS degree (http://www.curvygirlguide.com/daily-curve/earning-the-mrs-degree/), where you need to find “the one” in college, or you won’t find them; contrasted with more liberal movements hearing young people say “I don’t believe in marriage – ever.” Instead of struggling with this concept, why not focus on what MLP focuses on: friendship. Be friends, don’t worry about the romance. Instead of fighting and grappling with it, simply quit worrying about it… FRIENDSHIP is what is magic, NOT romance, and this is supported by the old adage that “the person you marry should be your best friend, too.”

Even more profound is this: http://www.aarp.org/relationships/grief-loss/info-02-2012/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying.html. Read the article. Then tell me which of them My Little Pony does not address. If I may be so bold as to answer the question for you: It addresses all of them. The show is more than just a show for little girls, profoundly more. It may, in fact, be the burgeoning renaissance of a serious philosophical search for truth in meaning that our generation is yearning to have: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1m099t4TIA

Humanity works best when we all work together through honesty (Apple Jack), loyalty (Rainbow Dash), generosity (Rarity), kindness (Fluttershy) -- laughing about all of it (Pinkie Pie) and lead by some inexorable force to improve ourselves (Twilight Sparkle). Perhaps this is an incomplete morality, there are other concepts, such as forgiveness, that may warrant further discussion, and of course Rarity’s element was originally that of inspiration, so it wasn't even intended to be a fixed representation of truth to begin with. Still, My Little Pony’s success is not just because of superficial features such as how adorable the ponies are or how awesome derpy-hunting is. It fills a deep gap that many people have been trying to fill in their lives, and hopefully it will continue to do so.

Hasbro, you hold my heart in your hand. Season 4 could throw me into the bosom of ecstasy, or leave at my knees, weeping, and from reading all the online content that MLP has generated, I know I am nowhere near alone. Be careful with your choice. 11-23-2013 <3.